GS CleanTech Corporation (GS), a wholly owned subsidiary of GreenShift, has recently turned up the heat on a host of ethanol producers, firing off complaints in courthouses across the midwestern United States. The recent lawsuits include:

GS CleanTech Corp. v. Big River Resources Galva, LLC, filed February 12, 2010 in the Northern District of Illinois (gs-galva_complaint.pdf);

The ‘858 Patent is directed to methods of recovering oil from byproducts of ethanol production using the process of dry milling, which creates a waste stream comprised of byproducts called whole stillage.

According to the ‘858 Patent, whole stillage contains valuable oil but prior processes for recovering this oil have been expensive or inefficient.

GS’s patented method includes mechanically separating the whole stillage into distillers wet grains and thin stillage and then running the thin stillage into an evaporator to form a concentrated byproduct, or syrup. The syrup is fed through a second centrifuge, which separates usable corn oil from the syrup.

By my count the complaints filed this month bring GS’s patent enforcement total to nine lawsuits, which suddenly makes this a major green patent story. Stay tuned.